


Nice to meet you

by kate882



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 13:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4524660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate882/pseuds/kate882
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe they can start over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nice to meet you

The thing was, Aomine knew it was his fault. He was fully aware that he was the reason he and Tetsu weren't friends anymore. It still hurt though.

He hadn't expected that part. He'd stopped caring about basketball, so why should Tetsu be any different? Probably because a basketball couldn't look at him with such betrayal and pain. Pain that he had put there. Although, sometimes he felt like the basketball in his room was judging him for how long it had been since he'd used it. He may have thrown a pillow at it at one point.

His family noticed. Of course they did. They loved Tetsu. "Why don't you go to the street ball court anymore? Why doesn't Kuroko come around anymore?" He started locking his bedroom door just to keep them away so that the questions would stop.

He felt something almost like anger when Tetsu quit the team. How dare he? How dare he tell Aomine not to quit and then do just that himself.

It passed though. It wasn't his business. They weren't friends, and they were about to be in different high schools anyway. Why should he care if Tetsu quit?

The pain hadn't gone away though. It was like a dull ache in his chest. Maybe going to different schools would be better. Maybe the pain would go away if he didn't have to look at Tetsu all the time.

He pretended like that was the case, but he still woke up sometimes from dreams of him and Tetsu standing next to a river, watching Tetsu break apart and feeling himself doing the same.

He couldn't bring himself to see Tetsu when he and Satsuki went by his school. Not after he met his replacement. How had Tetsu found someone new so fast? And why couldn't he have at least picked someone better?

That feeling of anger was back. Tetsu shouldn't have to settle for this guy. He deserved better. His light should be strong enough to actually be able to make Tetsu play his hardest. And that light should not be some mediocre replacement of _Aomine._

And it wasn't until he was laying in bed trying to sleep that he realized the two reasons that Tetsu was using Kagami as his light instead of someone better.

He didn't have anyone better. The best potential lights were his old team mates that had written him off and so he'd done the same to them.

He was also afraid. If he picked anyone better, the same thing could happen with him and this light that had happened with him and Aomine.

Aomine didn't really feel smug about being the better of Tetsu's lights after that revelation.

The first time he sees Tetsu again, it's at their game. He puts it off by showing up late, but it does nothing to help the feeling like being punched in the stomach that he gets when he sees him. The feeling that increases as he sees him with his new light.

He hears the words leaving his mouth as he talks down at Tetsu, but he doesn't register saying them. He's too focused on the look on Tetsu's face as he says them. The look of horror. The look that says that Aomine has failed him _again._ He can't make himself stop talking and it's like the time at the river all over again. He knows the face Tetsu gave him would haunt his dreams just like the one from the river still did.

But Tetsu didn't give up. Even though Aomine's team was crushing his, Tetsu played as hard as he could the whole time. It was the first time in a while Aomine felt something during a game.

He saw him at the hot spring, and tried not to think too much about the fact that he still remembered Tetsu's favorite drink. He focused instead on Tetsu's light, who came in -with the wrong drink, Aomine noted with a bit of satisfaction- declaring that he and Tetsu were going to win the next game.

The next game was different. Tetsu and his new light were good. They were too good. For the first time in over a year Aomine felt himself smiling as he played. He went into the zone, and he still lost. It was ... Aomine wasn't sure what it was.

But then Tetsu was calling him, asking him to teach him how to shoot, and Aomine started to think maybe things would be okay.  

It still hurt though. Things weren't the same. He hadn't expected them to be, but it didn't make it better. It wasn’t until after the Winter Cup that it came up.

“Do you think we’ll always be like this?” Tetsu had asked him as they took a break from the one on one match they’d been having. Aomine could have kept going, but Tetsu never did have that much stamina.

“Like what?” Aomine pretended he didn’t know. Pretended he couldn’t feel his insides tearing themselves apart as he imagined the worst outcomes of this conversation.

Tetsu struggled to put the feeling of distance into words. “Careful.” He decided on.

“Careful?” Aomine repeated, looking at him blankly. That wasn’t the word he would have picked.

“Yes. Careful. We’re so afraid of saying the wrong thing that we don’t say anything. We’re being so careful to not break what we have now that we’re breaking it with the pressure we’re using to keep it together.” Tetsu said, sounding more sure of himself this time.

“So . . . what? You want to just throw it all away again?”

“We threw it away the first time?” Tetsu tilted his head in an adorable show of confusion.

“If middle school wasn’t throwing away a friendship, I don’t know what is.”

Tetsu hummed consideringly. “I don’t think I do either. Generally when you throw something away though it doesn’t stick with you. You don’t have it hovering over you threatening to ruin everything at any moment. That’s kind of the point of throwing it away. We still have our old friendship hovering over us. Telling us that this isn’t good enough simply because it’s not the same.” He paused, but Aomine stayed quite. He wasn’t sure exactly where Tetsu was going with this line of thought.

“What I mean is . . . maybe we should throw it away. We’re building something nice here between us, but we’ll never figure out what that is if we can’t get past how we failed before.” Tetsu looked at him expectantly, but Aomine was still waiting. “I think we should try starting over.”

And then there was a hand in front of Aomine and Tetsu was smiling politely at him. “Hello. I’m Kuroko Tetsuya. I love basketball, and I’d like to see if I can love you too. After all, anyone who loves basketball can’t be a bad guy, and you’ve got a basketball in your lap right now, so you must at least _like_ the sport. I bet I can take you at one on one.”

Aomine blinked a few times before a grin spread across his face and he shook the offered hand. “Aomine Daiki. I’ll take you up on that challenge.”


End file.
